I'm an analyst of technology, the global economy, and far more complex phenomena – my four young children. Through my firm Entropy Economics LLC, I research the growth of the Internet and the broadband networks and applications that drive it. I also study innovation around the world, especially in China, and frequently write about all these topics on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. For eight years I advised technology investors as executive editor of the Gilder Technology Report and after that was a senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation. I'm a scholar at the U.S. Chamber Foundation, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute's Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy, and am also a trustee and vice-chair of the Indiana Public Retirement System (INPRS). Find me on Twitter @JBSay and @entropyecon.

Mr. Son Comes To Washington With Big Broadband Vision But Few Facts

SoftbankSoftbank chairman Masayoshi Son, the swashbuckling Japanese entrepreneur-investor who in 2012 bought mobile carrier Sprint, is coming to Washington. He’s coming because he’d also like to acquire T-Mobile, America’s fourth largest mobile firm, but the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission are waving off the potential merger. So Son, in a round of Beltway speeches on Tuesday, is expected to lay out his plan to combine Sprint and T-Mobile and rescue the American mobile industry from the doldrums.

It’s true that the U.S. needs to clear more wireless spectrum — the radio waves that carry signals — to both accommodate the current flood of mobile data and drive future innovation. But the urgent need for more spectrum mostly shows how much positive momentum American mobile enjoys. Mr. Son should get his merger. But not for the reason he states. The notion that U.S. broadband and mobile are lagging is simply false, and dangerous — because it it being used as a pretext for massive new regulation of the Internet economy.

As we have shown, the U.S. generates and consumes more Internet data (per capita and per user) than any nation but South Korea. Its broadband speeds are the fastest of any non-small nation, and in its non-rural states, speeds are among the very fastest in the world.

When it comes to mobile in particular, America leads the world.

The U.S. has deployed more 4G networks and 4G devices than anyone. Lots more. More than 95% of Americans have access to 4G LTE networks (the fastest, most advanced network standard), and by mid-2013 Americans enjoyed as many 4G LTE connections than the rest of the world combined. Japan’s largest mobile carrier NTT Docomo expects to cover just 70% of its population with 4G LTE by 2015. At the end of 2013, 30% of U.S. connections were 4G, compared to just 2% in the EU.

The U.S. has 290 million mobile subscriptions that are either 3G or 4G (the third and fourth generation wireless standards), accounting for 92% of the American population, the highest proportion in the world. Japan is next at 84%, and most other nations lag far behind. Germany, for example, is at 56%.

In 2013, U.S. broadband firms invested $34 billion in mobile networks and another $35-plus billion in wired networks. The U.S., with 5% of the world’s mobile users, invests 24% of all global wireless capex dollars. (With 4% of the world’s population, the U.S. accounts for 25% of all broadband investment.)

U.S. mobile users generate and consume more data traffic per capita than anyone except the Japanese. The U.S. generates twice the mobile traffic (per capita) of Western Europe. Surprisingly, per capita U.S. mobile traffic tops even South Korea, long a leader in mobile infrastructure and adoption.

U.S. mobile users talk four to five times as much as their Western European counterparts (measured in voice minutes) and send six times as many text messages.

Data prices in the U.S., meanwhile, have plunged 93% over the last five years, to just three cents per megabyte ($0.03/MB).

Because of its vast geography and low-density population, covering the U.S. with wireless infrastructure is far more difficult and expensive, making these accomplishments all the more impressive.

Mr. Son says a Sprint-T-Mobile merger would present a more effective competitor to wired broadband providers like the cable MSOs. He’s right that wireless is an increasingly effective partial substitute for wired broadband. But the key limiting factor is spectrum — where Mr. Son’s own Sprint already reigns as spectrum king — not a failure of investment, technology, or too little oversight from Washington. Sprint and T-Mobile, moreover, are the chief advocates of special rules that would prevent their mobile rivals from acquiring more spectrum. Mr. Son cannot both argue that wireless is an important competitor to wired broadband and also seek special favors that block his wireless competitors (AT&T and Verizon) from the ability to compete.

Perhaps the most important manifestation of the healthy U.S. mobile arena is our flourishing market in content, apps, and services. The Apple iOS and Google Android operating systems started here and have now spread across the world. The combination of smartphones, tablets, and apps created new software and content industries, centered in the U.S. And although the valuations of some Silicon Valley mobile and Internet start ups may seem frothy or even ridiculous, they are a sign of vibrancy that exists in few other places on earth.

Less heralded but no less important are the rippling mobile innovations spreading into every industry and sector, from health and education to autos, agriculture, aviation, and more.

Calls for mobile market share and spectrum limits, regulation of Internet interconnection agreements, and even a great leap backward to the hyper-regulatory environment of Title II telephones are downright weird. Old time regulation has no place on the wild and fast-paced Internet, and it threatens to slow one of America’s few high-revving economic engines. The chief argument of those pushing these government impositions on the Internet is the absurdity that the U.S. digital economy is broken. Mr. Son may not know it, but trashing the U.S. mobile and broadband markets could lead to policies that render his American communications assets far less valuable.

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